His eloquence is a big part of the reason that Barack Obama got to the Oval Office. There’s always been a sense that his ability to explain things was tantamount to his ability to fix them. But the sheer complexity of health care has so far defied both his ability to explain and his power to fix. And in this case, the latter is an even greater challenge than the former.

Actually, the sheer complexity of health care is an advantage for proponents of “reform”, it does not undercut their efforts. After all, if the majority of the American people understood, for instance, that a “public option” really means a single-payer plan in the long run, Obama would never be able to mislead Americans by using the rhetoric of free-market competition to sell a plan that in actuality kills competition.